High-linearity photodiodes are actively researched in the field of microwave photonics, with applications in the academic, industrial and military sectors. A recent survey collects reported state-of-the-art results from the component level (V. J. Urick, J. F. Diehl, M. N. Draa, J. D. McKinney, and K. J. Williams, “Wideband analog photonic links: some performance limits and considerations for multi-octave limitations,” Proc. SPIE 8259, 1-14 (2012) (“Urick et al. 1”). The concentration of high-linearity photodiode work is largely in terms of single-octave third-order-limited intermodulation distortion as quantified by a third-order output intercept point (OIP3). One of the inherent advantages of photonic solutions is the wide bandwidth available in the optical domain, making analog optical links attractive for multi-octave applications. However, even-order distortion generated by photodiodes can be inhibiting in such implementations as described in Urick et al. Previous works, e.g. Urick et al. 1 and V. J. Urick, A. S. Hastings, J. D. McKinney, P. S. Devgan, K. J. Williams, C. Sunderman, J. F. Diehl, and K. Colladay, “Photodiode linearity requirements for radio-frequency photonics and demonstration of increased performance using photodiode arrays,” in 2008 IEEE International Meeting on Microwave Photonics Digest, pp. 86-89 (“Urick et al. 2”), have described the photodiode requirements in high-linearity photonic links for single- and multi-octave applications in terms of OIP3 and second-order output intercept point (OIP2), respectively. Oftentimes the present photodiode technology falls short of the system requirements, particularly in multi-octave applications. Architectural techniques have been devised to mitigate the component limitations. For example, photodiode arrays have been shown to achieve better linearity than the individual photodiodes are capable of alone. Two- and four-photodiode arrays have been demonstrated (see, respectively, A. Joshi, “Highly linear dual photodiodes for Ku-Band applications,” in 2009 IEEE Avionics Fiber Optics and Photonics Conference Digest, pp. 9-10, and Y. Fu, H. Pan, and J. C. Campbell, “Photodiodes with monolithically integrated Wilkinson power combiner,” IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 46, 541-545 (2010); and S. Itakura, K. Sakai, T. Nagatsuka, E. Ishimura, M. Nakaji, H. Otsuka, K. Mori, and Y. Hirano, “High-current backside-illuminated photodiode array module for optical analog links,” J. Lightwave Technol. 28, 965-971 (2010) and Y. Fu, H. Pan, Z. Li, and J. Campbell, “High linearity photodiode array with monolithically integrated Wilkinson power combiner,” in 2010 IEEE International Meeting on Microwave Photonics Digest, pp. 111-113). This simple but quite effective technique is based on dividing the input signal between numerous non-linear devices and then linearly combining their outputs. The “array gain” scales with the number of elements for both even- and odd-order distortion, assuming that each element exhibits the same nonlinearity. Balanced photodiode arrays have been demonstrated that improve the OIP3 by the array gain but suppress photodiode-generated even-order distortion through the balanced detection process (Urick et al. 2, and A. S. Hastings, V. J. Urick, C. Sunderman, J. F. Diehl, J. D. McKinney, D. A. Tulchinsky, P. S. Devgan, and K. J. Williams, “Suppression of even-order photodiode nonlinearities in multioctave photonic links,” J. Lightwave Technol. 26, 2557-2562 (2008). This technique is attractive for multi-octave applications but requires two phase-matched fibers for the transmission span when implemented with a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM).